Apo said- There's a difference between internal consistency and realism. I would at least expect the story to have made sense to the person telling it.
I guess you've never dealt with anyone who was contradictory, or read a book where the author unintentionally introduced continuity errors into their story?
Apo said- However, I have seen those theories before about the two trees being one originally, and the story being garbled over time, so I admit that the final version that was preserved in writing could in fact be missing some of the original intent.
Sure, but not only that, there's no way to be certain you have an accurate understanding of the meaning the story had within it's original cultural context, besides spend ALOT of time learning of the history of the beliefs of the original listeners. And even there, since we're talking of beliefs in the ancient world, good luck NOT dragging a ton of your modern ways of thinking along with you (eg you and I know shadows are without consciousness, but Egyptians believed they were a partial visible manifestation of someone's soul with legends involving those who 'lost' their shadows, etc; the same could be said of the Earth (adamah), which ancient Hebrews conceived of as animate, quite differently than modern people do).
Scholars have spent their entire careers studying the subject of ancient thinking (eg RB Orion's classic work, the 'Origins of European Thought', where he examines context and use of words found in ancient literature (Greek, Hebrew, Latin, etc) to try and untangle the mystery of how ancient people they viewed their World). Fascinating stuff....
So when you say this:
Adam said- We're into eisegesis land then, by adding elements to the story which aren't explicitly stated in the original.
Apo said- I didn't add anything to the story. We're just reading the same words differently.
How do you KNOW the translation is accurate, that the concept itself can be translated to convey the author's way of seeing the World? You're talking interpretation, but what basis do you have to justify it?
The challenge is way-more difficult than many people suspect, and many are quibbling over the meanings of words that were inserted by later translators who often discarded the original words and hence lost the meaning along the way.
Heck, the JWs did it INTENTIONALLY with the story of A&E, trying to suppress evidence of 'Eve's quest for wisdom' to remove it from the account:
The practice of 'updating' the Bible is rampant, where changing the meaning of a single word can dramatically alter the meaning of the entire story to bury the skeletons....
Most of the articles I've read on the original intent reflect the fruit of the tree of life isn't meant to be anything more complicated than giving the eater continued life (eternal life is implied, by God's statement that he'd have to tolerate mankind)
Apo said- What statement do you mean? All I see in the account is that God wanted to stop man from eating the fruit, so he removed him from the Garden. I read the Jewish Encyc. article, but it does not explain its assertion that one eaten fruit meant immortal life. Being that it's from 1908 A.D. and not 1908 B.C., it doesn't hold a lot of weight with me just because it has the word "Jewish" in the title.
No, but rabbinical scholars have a better-chance of knowing the history of the thinking of their forefathers, rather than Xian theologians (who are more-likely to have a tendency to insert their theology into the OT). I have no problems with using Xian sources when looking at NT (as the ones who should know their own story), but their interpretations mean less when they insert theology into the OT to support THEIR NT beliefs. In fact, rabbis are better able to explain their criticisms of Xian beliefs than a Xian could, since Xianity is based on Judaism. It's always good to check BOTH sides, in fact.
Apo said- Why would they never have eaten from the tree of life if it was not forbidden to do so? And what purpose was it there for? Was God holding it in reserve until they were faithful a certain amount of time? I feel that a lack of explanation of these details indicates that the average listener in olden times was meant to assume that it was in fact a regular part of Adam and Eve's diet.
Well, if you watched the video in my post on pg 1, they offer some possibilities.
Apo said- I saw no possibilities suggested in that video. They showed the tree of life for all of 2 seconds. Could it be that you are just arguing for the sake of arguing? I'm not claiming any special knowledge in what the Bible really means to say, but I am encouraging people to read the passage just a bit differently in order to explain what people think is a plot hole. The wording is sufficiently vague in Gen. 3:22 that it could be referring to Adam and Eve eating the fruit once, or continuing to eat it as they had been doing.
Sure, but it's speculative, either way, unless you can back the interpretation with some supportive evidence. We might as well quibble over how many angels can sit on heads of pins, since the Bible doesn't say that, either.
Cold Steel said- My belief is that God intended for Adam and Eve to fall, but it had to be their decision. In the primordial first council, spoken about in many non-canoncial writings as well as the Bible, it's clear that the Father knew our first parents would sin. (He knows all, sees all, right? It wouldn't speak well for him if the fall of man caught him off guard.) But even though man was immortal, he had no glory, no understanding. He was not like Christ. So, to coin a phrase, it became a situation where man had to fall, but not make it look as though God pushed him.
That sounds ALOT like a Divine Set-up, some crime that was staged to appear as an accident?
And God created this entire elaborate scenario, WHY, exactly? Nothing better to do to kill an eternity in Heaven than kill some humans on Earth?
You might want to read the link above (if you already haven't), discussing the paradox of Adam and Eve since the story creates a paradox by implies God created the first pair as 'perfect' fools; so getting them to disobey was as easy as stealing candy from a baby (and actually harmonizes with your 'staged' crime interpretaion above).
OT said- Good & Evil may be a Merism. The Tree of knowledge of good & evil, would be the tree of Knowledge of everything.
Yup, merisms are literary-devices that commonly appear in the OT, since it was a favorite of the Yahwist (along with use of puns, etc).
The use of merisms typically conveys a sense of the totality of the spectrum, and NOT just the extreme endpoints. But unlike the modern view of knowledge, the TOKOGAE offered MORAL knowledge, AKA a sense of morality. The fruit is explicitly stated to bestow WISDOM, and not just intelligence (facts, figures, etc). In contrast, the story of Prometheus relies on his stealing fire from Zeus and giving it to mortals, where 'fire' was a commonly-used symbol of knowledge and advancement.
So when the amoral Eve coveted God's wisdom, she simply took it!
OT said- Satan may not have known about the Tree of Life, if he knew about it he could have eaten of it as well and Gained Imortality?
As I explain in the article on the paradox of Adam and Eve (linked above), it's no accident the serpent just happened to be hanging out in the morality-granting tree, since serpents were considered to already possess the secret of immortality (and Satan is immortal).
BTW, it's interesting to consider that Jesus advised his disciples to be cautious like serpents, like the serpent in the Garden. If Satan were the Devil, they why would Jesus advise his followers emulating the methods used by Satan to mislead Adam and Eve? Was he giving them permission to deceive others?
Adam
